Excerpt from A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days: Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons From the Stuarts to Queen VictoriaApart from political parties, we are all concerned in that important national birthright, the due representation of the people. It will be conceded that the most important element of Parliaments - specially chosen to embody the collective wisdom of the nation - is the legitimate method of their constitution. Given the unrestricted rights of election, a representative House of Commons is the happy result; the opposite follows a tampering with the franchise, and debauched constituencies. The effects of bribery, intimidation, undue influence, coercion on the part of the Crown or its responsible advisers, an extensive system of personal patronage, boroughmongering, close or pocket boroughs, and all those contraband devices of old to hamper the popular choice of representatives, have inevitably produced a legislature more or less corrupt, as history has registered. Bad as were the workings of the electoral system anterior to the advent of parliamentary reform, it speaks volumes for the manly nature of British electors and their representatives that Parliaments thus basely constituted were, on the whole, fairly honest, nor unmindful altogether of those liberties of the subject they were by supposition elected to maintain; and when symptoms of corruption in the Commons became patent, the degeneracy was not long countenanced, the national spirit being sufficiently vigorous to crush the threatened evils, and bring about a healthier state of things.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.Эта книга будет изготовлена в соответствии с Вашим заказом по технологии Print-on-Demand компанией ООО «Книга по Требованию». Print-on-Demand - это технология печати книг по Вашему заказу на цифровом типографском оборудовании. Книга, произведенная по технологии Print-on-Demand (POD) представляет собой классическую печатную книгу с соблюдением всех стандартов качества, от офсетной бумаги и плотного картона до качественного клея, используемого при изготовлении. Черно-белая текстовая или полноцветная иллюстрированная книга (в зависимости от исходного файла, подготовленного к печати) может быть изготовлена в разных вариантах: - в мягкой обложке (Клеевое Бесшвейное Скрепление); - скрепление скобой (для книг с небольшим количеством страниц); - в твердом переплете с клееным текстовым блоком; Материалы, используемые при производстве книги: - бумага текстового блока - офсетная (белая или кремовая) 80 г/м2 - мягкая обложка - бумага мелованная 250 г/м2; - ламинация обложки - матовая или глянцевая; - твердый переплет - картон 2 мм, каптал, белые форзацы, прямой корешок - сверхпрочный полимерный клей; - каждая книга упакована в термопленку. Каждый заказ обрабатывается в индивидуальном порядке: каждой книге, напечатанной по технологии Print-on-Demand, присваивается уникальный номер.